Congress Quizzes FCC on Spectrum Auction

The Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee met on Tuesday to continue its oversight of the FCC.

All five members of the FCC -- Chair Kevin Martin, Michael J. Copps, Jonathan S. Adelstein, Deborah Taylor Tate, and Robert M. McDowell -- are expected to testify, and will undoubtedly face close questioning from committee members about the pending sale of a 60-MHz chunk of the telecommunications spectrum.

Interest in such spectrum auctions is typically limited to legislators and telecommunications insiders, but a recent push by Google for the adoption of open access to the spectrum has brought the debate to the mainstream and will undoubtedly increase popular interest in the upcoming auction.

Greater Scrutiny of FCC

Since the 2006 election, when the Democrats retook control of both houses of Congress, the FCC has been on a much shorter (and more public) leash in general. The Senate Commerce Committee has held its own set of FCC hearings this spring, and this is the Commission's second recent appearance before the House.

In mid-July, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee, sent a letter to Martin that expressed concern about the rising private equity ownership of communications-related businesses, including mass media outlets.

"We seek your assistance," they wrote, "in ascertaining whether there are policy implications for this trend and whether the Federal Communication Commission's current attribution rules for ownership and control of Commission licenses is adequate." It is a reasonably safe bet that no such letter would have been sent by Republican committee members.

But it is the growing debate over the interoperability of wireless devices -- driven in part by Google's interest and in part by the widespread frustration over AT&T's five-year exclusive deal for the iPhone -- that has stripped the FCC of much of its bureaucratic anonymity.

The Google Spotlight

Also in Martin's mailbox recently was a July 20 letter from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, promising to meet the FCC's reserve price for the upcoming spectrum auction -- a cool $4.6 billion -- provided that the FCC adopt the four pillars of open spectrum proposed by Google: open applications, open devices, open services, and open networks.

"When Americans can use the software and handsets of their choice," Schmidt wrote, "over open and competitive networks, they win."

Last week, Martin released his preliminary proposal for the terms under which the auction will be conducted, and while the plan embraces some of Google's suggestions, it does not go as far as the Mountain View, California-based company would like. Martin proposed requiring the winner of a 22-MHz chunk of the available spectrum to provide open access to devices and software applications, but so far has not endorsed Google's other two suggestions.

Whether and to what extent the FCC should do so will undoubtedly be the types of questions that Telecommunications and Internet committee members will be asking.

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